Unstructured Text
Remove Line Breaks
Turn text that is broken into short lines into smooth sentences, while keeping your paragraphs if you want to.
When to use it
Typical uses: Fixing text copied from PDF reports, e-books and scanned documents; Cleaning up quoted email replies before reusing them; Preparing a description to paste into a single-line form field.
In a pipeline
Text InputRemove Line BreaksText Output
Settings
| Setting | Type | Required | Default or hint |
|---|---|---|---|
| Text column | select | — | Text |
| Keep paragraph breaks (blank lines) | checkbox | — | true |
| Generate New Column | checkbox | — | false |
| New Column Name | text | — | Default: <column> Result |
| Insert After | select | — | After the column |
| When a value cannot be converted | select | — | stop |
Example
Remove Line Breaks: an example
| Text |
|---|
| Text copied from a PDF often breaks in the middle of a sentence like this. A second paragraph also wraps early. |
| Text |
|---|
| Text copied from a PDF often breaks in the middle of a sentence like this. A second paragraph also wraps early. |
Worth knowing
- What is the difference between a line break and a paragraph break? A line break ends one line and starts the next one straight away. A paragraph break is usually two line breaks in a row, which shows up as a blank line. This tool can remove the first kind while keeping the second.
- Does it handle Windows and Mac line endings? Yes. Windows uses a carriage return plus line feed (CRLF) and macOS and Linux use a line feed (LF). Both are recognised and replaced.
- Will words at the end of a line be joined together? No. Each line break is replaced with a space, so the last word of one line and the first word of the next stay separate. Words that were split with a hyphen at the end of a line keep the hyphen.
- Works on any text column, not only Text Input's: pick it under Text column. Tick Generate New Column to keep the original next to the result.